Barney Frank comes out again: This time as a pot smoking atheist

Former Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank (D) revealed Friday on Real Time with Bill Maher that he is a “pot smoking atheist.”

Maher had questioned whether Frank felt liberated now that he wasn’t a member of Congress.

“You were in a fairly safe district,” Maher noted. “You were not one of those Congresspeople who have to worry about every little thing. You could come on this show, and sit next to a pot smoking atheist, and it wouldn’t bother you.”

“Which pot-smoking atheist were you talking about?” Frank responded, pointing back and forth to himself and Maher.

Frank became the first member of Congress to voluntarily come out as gay in 1987. Along with championing LGBT rights, Frank also fought to scale back the government’s war on marijuana and reform the financial sector.

He told Maher he had hoped to be appointed to Massachusetts’ Senate seat, so his husband could hold the U.S. Constitution rather than a Bible and affirm rather than swear that he’d be a wonderful senator.

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Eric W. Dolan has served as an editor for Raw Story since August 2010,
and is based out of Sacramento, California. He grew up in the suburbs
of Chicago and received a Bachelor of Science from Bradley University.
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